Our lives depend on transportation, from getting us to work in the mornings, delivering products to our stores, and fresh food to our grocery stores; it is essential for our modern society.

At the turn of the 20th century, the car was the revolutionary invention, as were other transportation methods: rail, truck, and the airplane. These might soon be seen as relics, as transportation of the 21st century is rapidly evolving. In less than a decade, self-driving cars and other modes of transport will change the entire landscape.

IoT data transforms transportation

In 2018, San Francisco launched a parking pilot to reduce time people waste looking for parking and introduced demand-responsive price adjustments. The project uses real-time data from a network of GPS wireless sensors to detect parking availability. The project has led to a 30% reduction in exhaust emissions and vehicle miles traveled to find parking.

Uber has been sharing its Movement tool with selected municipalities to analyze travel data based on millions of trips collected by the company. This data helps to provide deep insights into travel time, travel patterns, and how road closures or big city events impact traffic.

With all the IoT in transportation, vulnerabilities emerge

August 4, 2017. Autoblog reported that a group of university researchers have figured out how to hack self-driving cars by visually manipulating street signs. They used stickers to trick the vision system of an autonomous car into reading a STOP sign as a 45-miles-per-hour sign instead. The consequences of even such a simple attack are obvious.

June 6, 2016. The Washington Post reported that Dallas electronic road signs were hacked and false messages were posted. The Texas Department of Transportation responded to the hacked message boards saying they belonged to a private contractor who determined they had been hacked via local access.

NOVAM Solution

The innovation in transportation are outpacing the underlying security needed for the IoT in this sector. At NOVAM we are looking at a bottom-up approach to security, securing the building blocks of a system. NOVAM will protect against firmware and software changes on IoT devices, by automatically monitoring and mitigating malware and ransomware.